Eyes Wide Shut
by Recall the Love
Summary: Closed, like this... Maybe you can pretend you're still good enough.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Not even gonna pretend this is 100% shippy or in character or anything. This was therapy for me and sorting through some awful feelings I'm having right now. It's nearly 2am. I just don't care.**

* * *

You've been sat here an hour. Maybe two. Simply talking. You're not sure what causes it to happen, but at some point, the laughter dissolves. It seems to stick around in your ears for moments afterwards as though there was an echo, ringing repeatedly through your mind.

She raises her head and looks at you, properly, for the first time since you arrived. As you look back, your heart seizes in your chest.

You're close - too close. You could count freckles, if she had them; you can see the individual splashes of colour that make up her iris. Nothing you've not noticed before, and you feel the same awe at her beauty that you always have but... It's not as light, anymore. Now you know what it's like to lose it, the awe has a slight note of desperation behind it. You want to soak in every sight that you can now in case it goes away again. You were naive to ever take it for granted, to have pretended that something so good could ever stay in your grasp for long.

The time in which you had to do without her feels like a distant dream; a nightmare.

She licks her lips and you can't help but track that movement. It might have been a flirtatious move on your part in the past but you can't help yourself now. You drink in every tiny change in her face, every slight muscle twitch like it might disintegrate before your very eyes.

You think you're unnerving her with your hard stare because she coughs lightly, a small flush crossing her cheeks. But she doesn't speak; she doesn't know what to say either. To start a real conversation, now, might break the fragile moment. Hushed voices are needed, a steady balance in order to not deepen the chasm.

You've talked enough today. Laughed, pretended there wasn't this tension between the two of you. Building to this moment.

You raise a hand, maybe to touch her cheek. It falters halfway through, falling uselessly back to your lap. Every movement carries so much weight behind it. You can feel the pressure of a thousand mistakes, unspoken resentments, worries that might never go away. Does she truly still love you? Will she change her mind and leave you again?

With another breath you mentally draw them close to you, and then... You let them go.

'I want to kiss you,' you say - half mumbling it. The words scratch in your throat, throat bobbing as you choke down nausea from the fear that follows it.

But she doesn't shove you away or frown or smile. Simply blinks once and nods twice. You wonder what that blink carries behind it as you lean in the way you have so many times before, but never with such trepidation.

It's short. Barely a peck that leaves you wanting more before your lips even leave hers. You've never been able to get enough of her in the past, either, but back then it was just hunger pangs. Now you're starving, wasting away. You feel like you might kiss her forever and never fill that emptiness.

You wish you were alone, and not in public so you could pull her in close the way you want to. You want the kiss to reawaken feelings in her, to remind her why she ought to pick you. You want to kiss away any memory she has of him, replace thoughts of his hands on her with your own. Is she thinking of him now when you're kissing her? Does she feel the same sickly twinge in her gut picturing the night she had with him?

Your hand cups her cheek, a thumb smoothing its way over her skin. It feels the same as always, warm and soft, but there's something... Off. Something not quite in the right place.

Logic tells you that she picked you, in the end. She met you today because she picked you. She's letting you kiss her - kissing you back - because she wants you and no one else.

Logic isn't winning in your mind though, merely whispering feebly at the back of it while fear screams at the forefront. Screams that these are places on her that you once loved, and cherished; this was a sanctuary for you. And yet while you were gone, someone walked into that sanctuary, moved all of the furniture and left muddy footprints all over the pristine carpet. And what's worse, she let that happen. Wanted it to.

You might be able to restore it, but could you ever forget that a complete stranger had been in there? Would you always see it in the back of your mind? Will you always wonder if you're enough, or if he gave her something you never could?

You hope to God that isn't the case. Because even in spite of all that, you want her. In spite of everything she's still worth it to you. You don't want to be angry or jealous or possessive, to wonder about him and let him make you into something you are not. What you _want_ is to pour all of yourself into this kiss, to prove to her that faith in you, in your relationship together, is justified. You want to speak to her with your touch and your chemistry when words are failing you, to remind her of what hangs in the balance. That picking you, coming back to you and not him or anyone else, is the right choice.

Yet somehow, it hurts that it was ever a choice she needed to make in the first place. To you, she is an inevitability - as expected as gravity pulling you down as you step off a plane. To you even your deepest anxieties don't stand a chance to the freefall of being in love with her. Maybe that makes you the wrong one; maybe you're in this too deep and you're not thinking straight. It's just another worry settling deep in the pit of your stomach while you kiss her. One of millions.

All of this you feel and think in the brief, dizzying moment of your lips being pressed to hers. When you pull back you expect to feel awakened, like cold water has been poured over you. But the fog doesn't clear. It's just a hazy fog of the scent of her shampoo and body wash, the rapid thrum of her pulse beneath your fingers matching your own. You can't shake her off you or wake up from her.

You realise she has not opened her eyes quite yet.

And you're glad of it. Because you don't know if when she does open them that you won't just see the weight of disappointment behind them.

Closed, like this... Maybe you can pretend you're still good enough. That you reassured her this way was the right choice. That you're better than him. That you're better than anyone. That no one can love her the way you will, and no one can kiss her how you will. That although she wanted to leave you once, coming back to you was the right decision.

There's still hope in this moment that you wish you could hang onto forever - hope that you managed to pour everything into that kiss that you needed to. On the other side of that moment you might be seeing the realisation in her eyes that you're not enough.

It nearly killed you the first time she broke up with you. You don't think you could handle it another time.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hello again. Thanks to everyone who reviewed or messaged with concern over the first chapter of this; I am doing okay. I know this isn't hugely Pitch Perfect or Bechloe-ish still, so I appreciate the lack of (voiced) annoyance over that aspect because writing is the one way I can sort through my feelings and turn them into something productive.**

 **I didn't really intend to write a follow up to this and the one I did have planned was kind of a similar tone: struggling with my mind and what is real, what is rational, how scared I feel at not being able to tell the difference.**

 **But you know what? Sometimes you have to give fear a big old 'fuck you' and remember what it is that makes you want to be brave.**

* * *

... She's snoring a little.

Not the first time, but the first time in quite a while that you're hearing it. You're hoping it's not the last time you hear it. You find it pretty cute in its own way but she'd get super embarrassed if she knew – yet honestly, you don't mind. It's odd but you like the reminder that she's there – alive, breathing. And it breaks up the silent screaming of your wandering thoughts, brings you back to the present, where there's everything you need sleeping right next to you.

It's 3 A.M. You haven't slept at all, yet; despite the exhaustion in your limbs and the weightless, surreal feeling of dropping off at any moment, you just can't seem to drop off. You're kind of used to it though; it happens when it's been a long time since the two of you shared a bed, and this break has been the longest.

She on the other hand, fell asleep within a few minutes of the lights turning off. Actually, maybe even a few minutes before the lights turning off, when you were bumbling around the room shrugging off clothes and brushing teeth and chancing a glance at her relaxed features whenever you could. It's an ability you envy. But perhaps it's better than the two of you laying here for hours, silent, restless and wound up. You've done _that_ before and there's an odd relief in the idea that she can escape you any time she wants.

Maybe you should feel irritated right now at your inability to sleep. You probably will later, because you're someone that naps half the day away as soon as you've woken up in the morning because you can barely drag yourself out. A full night with no sleep is nothing to sniff at, for you.

Yet somehow, you catch yourself smiling. Because she's _there_. Hand curled underneath one of your pillows, duvet wrapped haphazardly below her ribs, clad in your sleep shirt since she forgot her own. Taking up that empty space you've felt keenly every time you got into this bed, filling it, filling the room, filling _you_ back up.

You want to touch her to check she's still real, trace her face in that curious way you do even when you're both awake. You can look at her a thousand times and something still surprises you. Right now the strip of moonlight peeking through the curtains falls on her features, illuminating a mouth turned down in a tiny frown of disapproval at whatever she's dreaming about. Even when she's asleep there's some kind of noise. A mumble, here and there, maybe a high-pitched whine as she twists her neck, trying to shake off whatever is making her so restless.

Even now, she's more than just alive; she is life, lively, living, in your bed, chest rising and falling a little with the rhythm of her breathing.

But that's what she brought you. Volume. Brightness. Things that were already there, but she pushed the dials up to eleven. And sure, your life is a little louder with her in it, a little crazier and sometimes you wanna hide. A few more hasty splashes of colour outside of lines you've been carefully drawing for years. Every boundary you put up, she's kicked right through and dragged you through by the hand, whether you liked it or not.

But hell, she's never let go, even now. Even now, as you shift closer to her, she seems to sense it and lifts the fingers of one hand to lightly rest on your hip, warmth seeping through your clothes.

And she's there.

Even now.


End file.
